How Sofinco, Europe’s leading consumer credit provider, is transforming credit decisioning with Open Banking

Sofinco: a long-standing player in consumer credit

A subsidiary of Crédit Agricole Personal Finance & Mobility, Sofinco is a major player in consumer financing in France. Active both online and through partner points of sale—such as those of the Fnac Darty group—the company offers a comprehensive range of credit solutions, including personal loans, revolving credit, and instalment payments. Committed to an innovation-driven strategy, Sofinco places customer experience and risk management at the heart of its development.

A strategic partnership with Algoan to reinvent credit decisioning

In October 2023, Sofinco and Algoan began their collaboration around a shared ambition: leveraging the benefits of Open Banking to improve the efficiency of credit risk assessment while streamlining the customer journey.

The project was initially launched with some of Sofinco’s e-merchant partners, such as fnac.com, before being rolled out in summer 2024 across digital journeys on sofinco.fr.

The use of Algoan’s solutions has gradually expanded to cover all credit products distributed by Sofinco—from amortising personal loans to revolving credit and instalment payments—now across all loan amounts.

Integrating Open Banking into Sofinco’s credit journeys

Thanks to Open Banking, Sofinco has been able to rethink customer affordability assessment through a seamless, secure, and real-time process.

In practice:

During the credit application process, after entering a few details, customers are invited to connect one or more of their bank accounts via a secure interface.
Algoan retrieves relevant banking data (income, expenses, incidents, etc.) via API.
This data is then analysed to generate affordability indicators and a behavioural credit score.
Sofinco integrates these results into its decision-making process to deliver an instant and tailored response.

Algoan’s products at the core of the solution

Sofinco relies on the two core products of Algoan’s decisioning platform:

Credit Insights: this API analyses banking transactions in detail to reconstruct a customer’s budget (income, fixed expenses, disposable income, etc.), detect specific risk signals (irregularities, payment rejections, etc.), and assess the borrower’s affordability.
Credit Score: this proprietary behavioural score leverages in-depth analysis of spending patterns, income regularity, and overall banking behaviour to assess default risk.

Open Banking driving performance and compliance for Sofinco

This innovative approach has delivered several tangible benefits for Sofinco:

A simplified customer journey: smoother and faster, with less manual data entry—particularly regarding income and expenses.
Fewer supporting documents: direct account analysis provides a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the customer’s financial situation, reducing or eliminating the need for supporting documents.
Improved risk management: affordability assessments based on Open Banking data are more reliable than those relying on traditional data sources. Behavioural scoring makes it possible to better differentiate customer profiles, particularly those historically poorly assessed by traditional approaches based on socio-demographic criteria.
CCD2-compliant affordability assessment: the use and analysis of Open Banking data make Sofinco’s credit journeys CCD2-compliant by design. CCD2 requires affordability assessments to be based on “relevant and accurate information” relating to both income and expenses. With exhaustive, fully up-to-date data from a reliable source, directly from the bank and without intermediaries, the affordability analysis provided by Algoan fully meets this new requirement.

Early results: promising indicators

"Since deploying Algoan’s solutions, Sofinco has recorded significant performance gains, including an increase of nearly 35% in GINI with this new affordability assessment system compared to the traditional approach. Open Banking is a real advantage for populations that have historically been poorly assessed, particularly prospects and younger customers."

Damien Liège, Deputy Chief Credit Officer at Sofinco (Crédit Agricole Personal Finance and Mobility)

Conclusion

The collaboration between Sofinco and Algoan provides a concrete demonstration of the value of Open Banking applied to consumer credit. It illustrates how innovative technologies can transform a long-established industry while addressing new consumer expectations around customer experience and upcoming regulatory requirements.

"Our collaboration with Sofinco perfectly embodies Algoan’s mission: to make credit decisioning fairer, faster, and more responsible through the power of Open Banking. Together, we have shown that innovation and performance can go hand in hand, delivering a better customer experience and more granular risk management."

Michaël Diguet, CEO of Algoan